The invention relates to a reaming system for progressively enlarging a bore. More particularly, it relates to a surgical reaming system for progressively enlarging a bone canal during orthopedic surgery.
Progressive reaming of bone canals is well known and discussed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,108,408 and 5,514,140. Progressive reaming systems can be used in the tibia or femur during knee replacement surgery, hip replacement surgery or for fracture fixation using nails. The systems utilize a plurality of reamers, each having different cutting diameters to prepare a bore for the stem of a knee prosthesis, femoral component or fracture fixation nail, for example. During such surgery, the surgeon initiates a reaming of the intramedullary canal using a smallest cutting diameter reamer selected from a set of reamers, and progresses up in selected incremental cutting diameters of the reamers until the desired size bore in the bone canal is achieved.